Surly Hamiltonian

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

Analysis of First Ontario Credit Union Buying Naming Rights for Copps Coliseum

Over on the Ticats focused Tigercatatonia blog, there's some analysis on First Ontario buying the naming rights for Copps Coliseum.

Tuesday, January 21, 2014

First Estimate of January Ontario Electricity Global Adjustment

From the IESO web site, the first estimate of the electricity global adjustment for January and it is rather low at 3.63 cents per kilowatt hour. This is lower than the final 5.00 last year, however the first estimate in 2013 for January was similar at 3.77.

Since the global adjustment is in some sense a relationship between the amount of total power used and the amount of expensive green energy (sun and solar) produced, January isn't often a high month for the global adjustment. It is dark and cold, so electricity is higher from light and space heaters and the like, with not a lot of solar produced and the wind produced is smaller compared to the total power consumed compared to some other months.

November 2013 was the highest month ever for the global adjustment at 8.47 cents per kilowatt hour. Last year the mean January temperature in Hamilton (which isn't a bad proxy for the populous Southern Ontario area) was -3 Celsius versus the usual -6C and since this January has been much colder than last year, I wouldn't be surprised for the final January global adjustment number to stay around the first estimate.

Friday, January 17, 2014

Toronto December 2013 Unemployment Numbers

I'm slowly progressing towards making a post about the Hamilton 2013 December jobs numbers, but I thought I would mention the poor Toronto numbers first. Some stats from this article from the Toronto Star:

"The jobless rate for the Toronto region — at 8.4 per cent in December — is the second highest among Canada’s major urban centres.

It is higher than the national average — 7.2 per cent — and it is even higher than that for cities like Windsor, which were harder hit by the 2008 recession, according to Statistics Canada data.

The city’s jobless rate is even higher when the numbers for the suburbs are stripped out of the StatsCan data for the Toronto area.

In a report delivered Tuesday to the city’s economic development committee, councillors heard the unemployment rate in Toronto proper had risen to 10.1 per cent."

Wow 10.1 percent in the City of Toronto is quite high, although I'm sure historically Toronto has had a relatively higher level compared to other areas of Ontario. One thing I would say about it, is that with rising housing and rental costs over the past decade in Toronto coupled with median income that has been pretty stagnant over the same time period, a lot of people in Toronto don't have a lot of money left over after housing costs to buy discretionary goods and services. That can't be very good for job creation.

Where will employment in Toronto go in 2014? The dollar dropping against the US dollar recently should help, bringing in tourism and lowering the number of the people that go to the US or other places for tourism or shopping. I'm not sure how much manufacturing is left in Toronto proper to benefit from a lower dollar.

What will be interesting will be to see how many Torontonians move out to other places including Alberta versus immigrants new to the country moving in and how that changes the composition of employment.

Tuesday, January 14, 2014

Ontario Loses 39,000 Jobs in December

A bit late on commenting on the latest Canadian employment numbers, but it needs to be analyzed. The headline was that Canada lost 46,000 jobs, but that really buries the lede that Ontario lost 39,000 jobs (with approximately 40% of the population) and the unemployment went from 7.2 to 7.9. Month to month numbers are going to be noisy but that is a pretty big jump for one jump.

There's been a raft of big plant closings in Ontario lately (for example Heinz in Leamington) and these jobs plus their knock on effects were bound to show up in the unemployment numbers eventually. A high dollar and high electricity prices have been causing manufacturing employment to leave Ontario so this shouldn't be that much of a surprise.

The dollar has been tanking recently (down to 92 cents) against its US counterpart and that definitely helps Ontario, both by making manufacturing wages cheaper relatively and also keeping Ontarians shopping at home and potentially increasing foreign tourism while depressing Ontarians spending their money abroad. The dollar decreasing also makes Ontario's high electricity prices more competitive with competing jurisdictions like New York state. Unfortunately prices are still scheduled to rise significantly over the next five years so even a 15% decrease in the value of the dollar won't help that much.

Losing employment is going to have to hurt Ontario tax revenues. Ontario income tax is heavily weighted to those who make enough to pay at the surtax levels so job losses at manufacturing plants which generally pay more than service sector jobs can have bigger effects. Jobless also spend less so HST revenues will be lower. Some of those employed will go on welfare which raises expenses for the province and municipalities. These job losses probably won't hurt government revenues for 2013 coming so late in the year, but they don't look good for next year.

I haven't checked the Hamilton individual numbers yet, but I'll make an individual post about them.

Saturday, January 11, 2014

Hamilton Already Has Third Homicide Victim of 2014

Continuing a rather alarming trend, 57 year old Ernie Sitter has been confirmed by Hamilton police as the third homicide victim of 2014. Sitter was murdered in his King Street East apartment. All three murders so far in 2014 have been in the lower city. At this point the police haven't named any suspects.

Compared to previous years (including only seven for 2012) three in such a short time is an anomaly. I'm not sure when the last time the city had three murders in one month. What's also odd is the number of murders in the dead of winter. Homicides in Hamilton happen more often in the summer months.

First Ontario Wants Naming Rights for Copps Coliseum

This blog post has discussion and comparisons to to other local naming rights values.

Thursday, January 9, 2014

Ontario School Board 2012 Sunshine List, and Analysis